Digimon World Championship is the latest in a long line of digimon games. Unlike the latest one though, there is no Story mode here. Your goal is to hunt, train, and battle to win the world championship.

Graphically, I feel like the characters aren't quite as detailed as they were in Digimon Dusk. I would have thought they would look at least as good as the previous games, but it just felt like they weren't quite there. Maybe that's just me though. The various areas that you hunted were quite similar to the previous games.

I personally played the majority of the time with the sound off. There really isn't a need for it. You do get little noises to let you know something is happening to a digimon, but you also get a message on the screen at the same time, so there's no need to listen to it at all. The same thing goes for the battles. You can hear when digimon take or deal damage. But since you get it all in text on the screen, I found it to be easier to play without sound or listen to music while I played.

When you first start Digimon World Championship, you'll find that you've been given a few different cages, food, medicine, hunting equipment, and one digimon. The cages you start out with consist of a main holding area that any captured digimon and post-battle will go into, a running track, an infirmary, and 2 more workout areas. Each of the training cages raises and lowers different stats. You'll notice that to raise one stat, you end up lowering another. You'll have to develop your own strategy to getting your digimon to the levels you want to digivolve them.

There is no Story mode in Digimon World Championship. Your main goal is to win the world championship. To do that, you'll need to hunt, train, and battle your digimon. You'll start out with only basic hunting equipment, so don't bother trying to get the higher level digimon with it, because you won't be able to pull them in without breaking the rope. I suggest starting out by capturing the small ones. You do have to keep your capacity in mind, though. At first, you'll only be able to hold about 4 digimon. You can actually hold more, but then when they digivolve, you'll lose that one because you exceed capacity.

After you've captured what you need, you'll need to work on training them. Essentially you'll need to drag and drop them between cages to train. After their stats have gone up/down, you'll need to move them to another cage to change them again. Simply leaving them in a training cage won't continually raise the stats like it would in Digimon Dusk. Make sure to keep an eye on their health too. If it is just low, you can drop them in the infirmary to have it continually raised to max. If they're in need of a bandage, though, make sure to heal them quickly. If you don't, they could die.

After you've trained them a little, you're going to want to battle as much as you can. A digimon has to have been in at least 10 battles to change into a digiegg, so you want to make sure they've been in at least 10 a year. Battles can be one on one, three on three, or one on three. You can battle in tournaments on the days that they are held. Otherwise, you can battle against other trainers. Wireless battles against friends do count towards the battles you need. Once you've trained your digimon enough, you can finally win the world championship.

The difficulty isn't very high in Digimon World Championship. You are given everything that you need from the beginning of the game, including money, food, medicine, and a digimon. As long as you train, hunt, and battle, you will eventually win the world championship. It's not really a matter of if you're going to win the game or not, it's more a matter of how long is it going to take you to get your strategy right to get there. The only thing you even have to keep an eye on is your money. You'll have to spend money to buy more food, medicine, hunting supplies, and training cages. But you can easily earn more money simply by entering battles. Supposedly you can run out of money, but I can't see how you could.

For the most part, playing the game is quite easy too. The tutorial does a really good job of explaining how to do things without being overly obnoxious for too long. The one thing I had trouble with was roping the digimon when hunting. I didn't realize that it wouldn't create the rope around them until you picked up the stylus, so I just kept circling it without ever getting it roped. Other than that, everything was easy to learn. The battles themselves are very easy to fight, since you have no control over them. You just sit back and watch. Once your digipedia is 100% complete, you will be able to control one monster in battle, so things might get a little more difficult than just watching then.

In Digimon World Championship, you use the touch screen to do just about everything. The only thing you use the D-pad and buttons for is to scroll around the screen and switch displays. Other than that, you use the stylus for everything. You'll touch whatever action you want to perform at the bottom of the screen. All the actions are in a list of boxes stretching across the bottom. After you touch the action, then you touch the screen to perform it. You can also drag the stylus to slide the screens around, move your digimon around, and pull the rope. Also, you need to pet your digimon from time to time to keep them happy. To do so, simply slide the stylus back and forth across them.

If you like games where the sole goal it to hunt, train, and battle, then Digimon World Championship is right up your alley. Personally I prefer at least a little bit of a story to go with my battles, but I still had fun playing with the various evolutions of creatures. I would probably recommend renting it before you buy it though, just to make sure you'll enjoy the play.